


Consequentialist Assemblage

by honeypothux



Series: The Utility Monster [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (Do hallucinations have to consent?), (kind of), (of a sort), Armitage Hux Has Issues, Blood and Gore, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Decapitation, Disembowelment, Dubious Consent, Gore, Hallucinations, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Necrophilia, Sthene is played by Zoe Saldana in my mind, Supreme Leader Hux - Freeform, Taxidermy, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 18:18:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13487067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeypothux/pseuds/honeypothux
Summary: Following the death and decapitation of Kylo Ren, Hux seeks a means of preserving his lover for his own enjoyment.Sequel to "Utilitarian Guillotine."





	Consequentialist Assemblage

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags!
> 
> A response to [this "Kylux Hard Kinks" prompt](http://kyluxhardkinks.tumblr.com/post/156058942518/prompt-below-the-cut-involves-dubious-consent-re).

The lights in the medical bay were too bright, washing the room in sterile white. Their distant hum, like a million stinging bugs, drowned out the rush of Demo Sthene’s heart.

She had seen a great many horrors in her time as the Finalizer’s chief medic. Lost limbs, bisected men, exposed organs -- even Kylo Ren’s blown open side, his flesh cooking from the impact of a wookie’s bowcaster. But in all her years, she had never seen something quite like this.

Kylo Ren’s body laid out across her examining table, clothing stripped back to reveal years of battle won scars. She was familiar with many of them. The deep gash in his thigh from Jabiim, the series of indents along his ribs from Taris, the discoloration on his lower stomach from infection on Voss. Even the patch of rough, dark skin on his side, which she’d so carefully tended after Starkiller.

It was a familiar body from toe to neck. And from there?

From there she saw nothing.

Hux stood to the right of Kylo’s body, posture stringent as ever. But his hands, usually so tightly clasped at his back, came around in front instead. In them, he cradled the head of Kylo Ren, its mouth crudely ajar, its eyes shockingly missing.

“I have a favor to ask of you, Sthene,” he said, speaking with the same, flat tone he adopted in his most generic holomessages. The Supreme Leader was dead, and Armitage Hux was free of all concern.

“What have you done?” she asked, stepping back from the table. The door was already closed behind her, but escape wasn’t even the point. She could not bear to breathe air Hux exhaled for fear of catching whatever sickness had chased all sanity from his eyes. Even with the knowledge that the Jedi girl had stormed the throne room, her condemnation was certain.

Hux may not have killed Kylo, but he had debauched him. And that was enough.

Hux rounded the table, pressing toward her. “I want you to patch him up for me,” he said, holding out the head. Close up, the white crust on its lips was evident. Demo’s stomach turned, her lips jumping to a sneer. 

“Preserve him,” Hux continued. “So he might sit at my side.”

“Grand Marshal, I am sorry, but I won’t do it,” Sthene snapped back, inching ever closer to the back wall. “You ask too much of me.” Her eyes darted over her shoulder; there were scalpels not far off, their steely edges glinting with eager invitation.

When her eyes returned to Hux, she found herself staring down the barrel of a standard issue blaster.

“Sthene,” Hux said, pressing the blaster to her forehead and turning off the safety with an audible click. “Kylo Ren is dead. Loyal as you were to him, you must be to me.”  
  
She swallowed, locking eyes with the ravaged sockets of Kylo Ren’s head.  
  
“Will you disappoint me?”  
  
“No, Supreme Leader.”

 

Drawing the seared flesh of Kylo’s neck back together came first, and it was a challenge. With Hux watching from the side of the room, Demo worked, driving metal rods deep into the exposed muscle of his neck. With the spinal column severed, stitches and staples wouldn’t be enough. She’d have to mount his head back on his body.

Like meat on skewers.

As her ring of metal rods grew, circling round the white jut of bone at the center of Kylo’s neck, Demo’s hands trembled. She could hear him there, behind her, breathing. Watching her with an expectant eye, waiting for the moment she might slip up. What would he do, she wondered. If she ruined him. If she took his lover and set him on the slow path of decay.

It wouldn’t be too hard. Plastination would have to follow this, to keep the body from rotting, and that could be soured easily enough. Sparing Kylo Ren this disgusting fate would be oh-so simple; just a few drops off in the polymer formula and he’d be saved.

But Hux was not one for failure. He was even less tolerant of sabotage; FN-2187’s betrayal had embittered Hux, left him without any tolerance for deviation. If she dared to go as far as ruining Kylo Ren’s corpse, he’d stop at nothing to see her suffer.

She could see it now. The operation table lights would burn her eyes and her own assistants would press tubing into her veins. What would it feel like, to have all the water and fat in her body replaced with plastics while she was still alive? Would she be aware of the moment when the tissue in her brain started to shift, or would life be kind to let her thoughts fizzle out as every cell grew stiff?

Demo lifted Kylo’s head from table, holding it out over the sharp ends of the rods. Gazing into the dark pits of Kylo’s eye sockets again, she froze. And then, a hand came to her shoulder.  
  
“Allow me,” Hux whispered, taking Kylo’s head from her hands. “I think he would have wanted me to be the one to piece him back together, as I so often did during his life.”  
  
It did not take asking twice. Demo backed off, jumping away from the cold, fragile, impending aura that radiated off Hux. In turn, he weighed Kylo’s head in his hands, pressing a kiss to its temple. It was almost funny, really. She had only seen them fight like rapid creatures in life, and yet Hux coddled him so gingerly, now.  
  
Perhaps it was simply the gloating posture of the victor, having finally outlived his rival.

The head came down swiftly, plunging on to the rods with a terrible sound. It was like a blade through an insect, cracking against the crisped top layer and then squelching through the soft, meaty innards. Blood, so dark in coloration is was almost black, trickled down from the point of the joining. It pooled on the metal tabletop and stained Hux’s hands.

She wasn’t sure when he’d removed his gloves or why, but he ran his bare fingers across the seam with reverence. Like a monk laying his hands on his patron’s idol.

“Just the suturing now, correct?” Hux asked, though he reached for the needle and thread before she could answer.

His hands worked carefully, the emergency medical knowledge he’d learned at the Academy put to use after years of neglect. His lines were agonizingly constructed, if amateur. They’d hold Kylo together well enough.

“It is kind of soothing,” he said, dipping the needle through the flesh. It weaved up and down, like a fish jumping forward in murky waters. The pace was almost like breathing; so methodically steady, so certain in its pattern. “I like being the one to do this, you see,” Hux continued, his eyes narrowing as he drew the thread along. “I was missing when he needed me in the throne room, but I can be here for him now. Even in such a small way.”

But you gouged his eyes out and fucked his mouth, didn’t you? Demo wants to say it, words burning on her tongue. You intend to keep his body like a pet and sully it whenever your twisted thoughts get the better of you. What help is that? What kind of love looks anything like that?  
  
Hux tied off the final knot and set his equipment aside. His gaze lingered on the seam at Kylo’s neck, watching rivulets of cool blood seep like tears.  
  
“You are going to drain the fluids from him now?” Hux asked.  
  
“Yes,” Demo replied, short  
  
Hux nodded, wiping his bloody hands against one of the nearby towels.  
  
“And there is no need to remove his organs? That isn’t necessary any longer, in preservation?” Hux asked, doing Demo the dishonor of bringing his dead eyes to her own.  
  
She shook her head, tongue too dry for words.

A hum reverbated out of Hux and he returned his attention Kylo. His fingertips traveled over the expanse of Kylo’s stomach, falling into the valleys and grooves of his musculature. “I might like to do it anyway,” Hux said, letting his fingers dip into Kylo’s navel. “There is so little information available on Force sensitives. Incomplete research during the Empire’s Project Harvester suggested there might be more to the biological prerequisites of the Force than the Jedi cared to let on. That these prerequisites might even be manufactured, with enough data.”

Hux wet his lips, hands coming to rest just above Kylo’s pubic hair. “We’ve been meaning to investigate these theories, but with such a small sample size…”  
  
“Small enough that our own Supreme Leader must become a subject?” Demo added, finding the will in all her disgust. Her brows cinched together, fingers twitching at her sides. When Hux grinned back at her, she longed to kick his teeth in.

“As much as I cherish him, he is only a body now,” he said, fingers curling in the dark curls above Kylo’s cock. “And in this case, the ends simply do justify the means.”  
  
Demo squeezed her eyes shut. “I wish to be excused, Supreme Leader.”

“You are free to go, Sthene,” Hux replied, already peeling off his great coat and laying it over the back of a nearby seat. “I will call for the researchers and a thorough investigation will be conducted.” He turned, pressing toward her. With six inches on her and a corpse smile, his shadow over her body was suffocating. “When it is done, I will expect you to complete your duty of preserving him.”

The exit behind her hissed, the locking mechanism releasing. Demo held Hux’s gaze for a moment longer, trying to find any scrap of a man in it, before giving a curt, “Yes, sir,” and vanishing out into the hall.  
  
As her feet carried her away, her stomach continued to sour. Back in her quarters, she curled over her toilet, retching. As bile dripped from her chin, she buried her face in one hand, burdened with wretched knowledge.  
  
Hux would not call a research team.

Even in death, Kylo Ren would know no kindness.

 

As the door sealed behind Sthene, Hux exhaled. At long last, the doctor was gone.

“Oh, Kylo,” Hux said, breathless. His hands found the joining of his head and body with ease, once again feeling at the crude press of seared flesh. Under the bright lights, the angry, red seam stood out against Kylo’s pale skin like a collar. Hux could imagine tying it around Kylo’s throat himself, his mouth pressed to Kylo’s ear, his words littered with claims to ownership.

Kylo had told him, once, that he would never be owned. Not again, not after the Jedi, not after Snoke. Hux would have to be content with taking only what Kylo offered him, and even then only on borrowed time. How funny that all seemed now, with Kylo so cold and still beneath him.

“Look at you, so handsome again. Almost like that girl never bothered you,” he whispered, peeling off his uniform in layers. Once fully nude, his erection standing proud against his stomach and throbbing painfully, he smiled. He laid his hands on Kylo once again, pressing his fingers into empty eye sockets. “Except you are mine now, aren’t you? Entirely mine.”

Kylo stirred to life beneath his fingers, sucking in a desperate around Hux’s hand. He coughed, trembling, and Hux leaned close to quiet him with soft kisses. “Shh,” Hux said, crawling over Kylo and straddling his hips. “You’re dead, love. It is all over.”  
  
“I can’t see,” Kylo said, his voice shaking. He sounded so much more exposed in death; like a child, lost to the world. “I can’t see.”  
  
Hux clicked his tongue and ran his hands up and down Kylo’s chest, letting his nails drag over the skin. “I know, I must apologize,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry. “I was so grief stricken that I got a little overzealous. I hadn’t meant to pop them, but you know how sorrow can be. It blinds you.”

Kylo sobbed, shaking his head back and forth. Even a corpse couldn’t accept its fate. He looked no more dignified than he had on Crait, sniveling on the ground despite receiving all he’d ever asked for.

The first cut started at the bottom of Kylo’s breastbone and dipped downward, slicing to just above Kylo’s cock. Little blood came forth, having pooled at the underside of Kylo’s body, but the flesh opened up to a brilliant red, anway. Hux inhaled shakily, his pupils blown wide, fingers feeling at the clean edges his knife had left behind.

On the table, Kylo jolted. If he were living, he would have jumped away, shouting in agony. But dead, he could only whimper. “What are you doing!?

“Opening you up,” Hux said, matter-of-fact. He started the second cut without waiting for the first to fully realize in Kylo’s mind, drawing a diagonal off the top of the first and up toward his left shoulder. As Kylo cried out, he mirrored the second cut with a third, leaving a red Y etched in Kylo’s skin. Lovely as it was, Hux wished autopsy worked differently. He would have liked to have cut his own initial across Kylo’s chest.

“Why?” Kylo whispered, his voice almost impossible to hear. The tremor in it went straight to Hux’s cock, drawing a tightness in Hux’s stomach. “Why are you doing this?”  
  
Hux went over the lines a few more times, revealing the bright yellow of Kylo’s fatty layer as Hux got down to the ribcage. The skin was easy to part after that, reflected outward to completely expose the ribs and their protective musculature. “My,” Hux said, so adoring as he laid a hand over Kylo’s pectorals. “These seem even bigger once the skin is out of the way.”  
  
Kylo didn’t answer that, just laying flat as Hux reached away to grab a small, electric handsaw. It was a wonder that Sthene had not seen it and immediately known was going on. Bladed saws had been out of fashion for centuries, long since replaced by their sonic and laser counterparts. It was only for Hux’s desire to see the blade spine, cutting layer by layer, that such a thing would ever be found aboard the Finalizer.

The saw buzzed to life in Hux’s hand, round blade spinning too fast to be seen. Kylo’s muscles pulled taught in response, and oh how magical it was to see them tense from the inside. “You were so powerful, Kylo. So strong,” Hux said, drawing the saw up the lateral sides of the chest. “And still, you died. Died like a fool while sitting on your own throne.”

As his ribcage came loose, Kylo cried. He lacked eyes, but tears came anyway, streaming down his face, joining the blood and ocular fluid which sullied him. Hux set the saw aside and pulled back on the chest plate, wrenching it upward with a crack like splintering wood. It stuck in place, Kylo’s lungs and pericardial sack now on proud display.  
  
“Please,” Kylo rasped, lifting his head, trying to see into himself with the vision he’d lost so many hours prior. “I don’t understand, Hux.”  
  
Scalpel in hand, Hux sliced away the remaining soft tissue. “You left me,” he said, teeth crashing together with the sharpness of his words. “With all your pride and arrogance, you damned yourself and left me behind.”  
  
With the pericardial sac opened, Hux stilled. His prize laid out before him, so brilliant red that Hux was drawn back in his memories.

When their love was still young, hope buried in their nightly whispers, Kylo showed him the core of his saber. There, a bright, glowing crystal, red as the saber’s blade, lay in two pieces. Splintered right down the middle, it reminded Hux so much of Kylo’s face, bisected by a jagged scar. Cursed by some old legacy.

“This is my heart,” Kylo had said, his lips pulled in a frown. “The heart of my saber, all that is left to guide me.”  
  
Hux took Kylo’s heart in hand and pulled. Its connections strained against him, but Hux was determined. The tearing of tissue drowned out Kylo’s pained shouts. As the Knight begged for mercy, Hux carried on, unwilling to let go of what he’d already lost once.

“Oh,” Hux breathed, eyes growing wide.

Kylo’s body gave way, surrendering his heart to Hux’s hands. His lungs labored in his chest, expanding and contracting in rapid succession, hissing with each exhale.

“Here it is,” Hux said, turning Kylo’s heart over. It was heavier than he’d expected, veins struck out on its side like pathways carved through a red desert. 

Kylo’s complaints had fallen away, replaced by the clinical silence of the Finalizer. Only the whir of the engine, like the proud beat of the heart Kylo had lost, carried on.

“It is funny, you know,” Hux said, cradling the heart against his own. He could feel his own pulse thrumming against his ribcage, making contact with the stillness that had claimed Kylo’s heart. “To desire something for so long and then to possess it so simply. It is almost comedic…”

“I loved you,” Kylo said. All feeling had left his voice. Perhaps the exhaustion of death was finally setting in.

“I know,” Hux returned, already inching down Kylo’s body and taking the scalpel in hand again. “But that is not sufficient. Loved is past-tense, and I cannot tolerate a world where I do not have your affections _always._ ” He pressed his scalpel to Kylo’s abdominal muscles, bisecting them, allowing pink guts to peak out. “And now I can have your heart forever. Just floating in a jar at my beside, just as lovely as you ever were.”

Kylo’s eyelids fell closed, though the rips and tears in them disturbed any potential for him to look at rest. “Will you still love me?” he asked, voice soft as Hux laid kisses on his heart and set the organ aside. “Despite this?”

Hux dipped his hands into Kylo’s guts, letting their slickness slide up across his palms. He buried himself to the forearms, tangling his fingers in the layers of intestine. Leaning forward, he drew close to Kylo’s face, every exhale brushing over his pale cheeks. “Always, Kylo,” he said, drawing the guts upward, pulling them free of Kylo’s body. “I will always love you.”

Kylo tossed his head back, moaning as Hux’s cock pressed between the ropes of his intestine. In reality, the outside of guts lacked the ability to appreciate sensation. But here, blinded by the overhead lights, Hux could see and hear whatever he pleased. So as he drew back and thrust again, dragging his cock along Kylo’s guts, he relished in Kylo’s gasping, letting it drown out everything else.

 

It had been six months since the plastination of Kylo Ren. Demo had been taking sleeping pills ever since, her dreams plagued by the familiar white fluid she found waiting in Kylo Ren’s chest cavity, all the sins of the galaxy reflected on its surface. Hux had commended her dedication and craftsmanship, rewarding her with the splendid lack of his presence. Still, she thought of the evils her work had done and wondered if relative peace of mind was worth it.

She approached the throne room with trepidation, fifteen minutes early to her summons just so she might have the time to contemplate fleeing. But, like wickedness itself, Hux was already waiting for her when she arrived. His guards parted the doors and urged her on, herding her into the rathtar’s den.

  
The chamber, dark and brooding in Kylo’s time, had been redone with white and gold. Blinding light muddled the details; everything seemed too flat and smooth, more statuesque than living. Even Hux, who sat upon his throne with a rising and falling chest, could have been mistaken for a wax figurine, the same look of smug contentment having occupied his face ever since his coronation as Emperor.

Beside him, the body of Kylo Ren sat, staring forward with empty eyes. Garbed in white satin with braids hanging through his hair, he looked more like a blushing bride than the Knight he’d been in life. Only corpses could not blush, no matter how well she preserved them. They only sat and stared, an insult to the natural flow of things, standing against the will of time despite having lost their life to it already.  
  
“Sthene,” Hux said, rising from his seat. He moved down the steps of his throne, red cloak trailing behind him. He came to a stop in a pool of blood, white boots quick to take the color. “I have an assignment for you.”  
  
Sthene tightened her jaw, peering down at the body splayed across the floor. Slowly, her eyes moved, following the smear of blood that trailed the head laying a few feet away.  
  
“Congratulations on your victory over the Jedi,” she said, refusing to acknowledge Hux’s attention.

“Yes, thank you,” Hux replied, stooping down to lift the head from the ground. Inspecting it, his grin cracked just slightly wider. “But I think I would rather like a souvenir.”


End file.
